I remove my heart from its marble casing and grind that shell into glass dust and force the dust and the occupational core into a box barely big enough to hold them and watch while the self-sealing lid sets itself. I then take the contraption to a place to which I doubt I will ever find my way back, even if I wanted to which I don’t. I have zero desire for what has been buried after having been done with like that one that was once. With such rigor and exactitude does the end come and more than once, which is a way of making a statement about the infinite duplicity of a suffocating blanket.
From A Doll for Throwing by Mary Jo Bang. Copyright © 2017 by Mary Jo Bang. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.